05 May 2005

Should the Runaway Bride apologize to the Hispanic community for fabricating a Hispanic man (and white woman - haven't heard from NOW yet) as the kidnapping team that supposedly abducted her? It wouldn't hurt, but in reality since no one heard the fabricated charge without knowing it was false, there really wasn't any harm.But if you're going to concoct a kidnapping tale, you need to concoct a kidnapper. So is it unreasonable to concoct a Hispanic one? I did a simple test. I typed in the word "kidnap" in Google News Search and looked at the top 20 items for an identity of the kidnapper. The items break down as follows:Foreign Cases - 9Hoax - 1 (a different hoax)Non-Hispanic - 4Hispanic - 4Michael Jackson Trial - 2

Of the 4 Non-Hispanic kidnappers, 3 involved child abductions. Out of 5 real domestic cases involving a kidnapping or attempted kidnapping of an adult, 4 of these cases involved a Hispanic perpetrator. So if you're an adult American interested in fabricating a kidnapping story, it's not the craziest thing to fabricate a Hispanic kidnapper while you're at it (it's certainly a lot less crazy than fabricating the story at all).